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Now using Fluxbox on Ubuntu 9.04

Even though the jury’s still out on my opinion of Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop, I finally had enough of GNOME today and configured Fluxbox on it and set it as my default window manager.

I’m running into some weirdness with that even, however, which may color my opinion of Ubuntu as a result… things that I’m not accustomed to fighting with when using Fluxbox.

Here are a few examples, just off the top of my head.

Problems

Can’t permanently disable the touchpad
This is a problem for me, because any time I am typing on my laptop, I frequently accidentally bump the touchpad at random, which causes the cursor to jump to wherever the mouse arrow happens to be at the time. Needless to say, if I don’t notice it right away, that leads to my typing in the middle of wherever that might be, which can be confusing and frustrating to say the least.

However, I haven’t been able to figure out how to disable the touchpad. Normally, in Slackware, I just do this in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but Ubuntu apparently has other ways of doing this. My /etc/X11/xorg.conf is practically empty, which has me scratching my head.

The only way (so far) that I have discovered how to disable the touchpad is to manually open up the GNOME control panel (which is an item on the default Fluxbox menu, in Applications=>System=>Administration), go to the “mouse” section (where the touchpad “enabled” checkbox is already unchecked) check the “enabled” checkbox under the Touchpad tab, and then un-check it.

I have to do this every single time I log in, which is tedious and irritating.

Mouse-wheeling over the Fluxbox toolbar does not switch workspaces
Maybe there is something missing from my /~/.fluxbox/init file, but I’m used to being able to switch desktops by scrolling my mouse wheel over the toolbar. Scrolling the mouse wheel over the desktop itself still works for workspace switching.

Double clicking on the titlebar of windows does nothing
Normally, in Fluxbox, if you double click on the titlebar of a window — any window — it “shades” the window by default. That is, it reduces the window to just the titlebar itself, so you can get to what’s under it. However, in Fluxbox on Ubuntu 9.04, (which I installed on this laptop simply by typing sudo apt-get install fluxbox), double clicking on the titlebar of any window simply does nothing.

Right clicking on the titlebar of windows does nothing
Again, normally, in Fluxbox, if you right click on the titlebar of a window, it will give you a menu that has a number of options on it for what you can do with that window: Shade, Stick, Maximize, Iconify, Send to, close, et al.

However, here right clicking on the titlebar of a window, like the double clicking behavior, does absolutely nothing.

No wireless!!!!
I discovered when I logged into Fluxbox instead of GNOME, I had no wireless connection, and no idea how to start up the wifi process(es).

Well, to be fair, these are mostly things that are running as a part of GNOME. Fluxbox, as a general rule, ONLY does what you tell it to do, and it has no knowledge of things like “nm-applet” (the wifi stack) or “gnome-power-manager”.

But yeah, you’d think that some base functions would run at startup on any Ubuntu box, regardless of what window manager or desktop environment one is running at the time.

It’s been frustrating slogging through all of this minutiae in setting up Fluxbox on an Ubuntu box, but now (I think) I have all these little things worked out.

Glad it helped someone out besides just myself. I made these posts as notes for myself as much as anything else, but I know that SOMEBODY besides me has to be trying out Fluxbox on an Ubuntu setup. 🙂

Also, I was sort of annoyed by the fact that you couldn’t move/resize by holding alt and pressing either of the mouse keys, so here’s what you need to add to the keys file to do that:
For Moving:
OnWindow Mod1 Mouse1 :StartMoving

I actually make a point not to do that. I have Diablo 2 Expansion set up in WINE, and holding down the ALT key is used in-game for viewing all dropped items, so I don’t like my window manager subverting that key binding. 🙂

About the Linux Critic

I'm a professional troubleshooter (a.k.a. IT Guy) and I've been using Linux as my main desktop OS for over a decade, at home as well as at work (even though I've worked predominately in Windows shops).

Professionally I work for an IT services company, supporting mostly Windows servers and desktops belonging to our clients and end users.

Personally, I'm a writer, a gamer, and a musician, and I'm also a movie buff. I still love technology though, and I'm always tinkering with computers on my home network.

I'm more technical than the "average user" by quite a ways, but I like to think that there's no reason why Linux and Free/Open Source Software can't find a home on the average user's desktop as a part of their everyday computing life.

I love to play around with technology, and I love to talk about it, so stick around and let me know what you're thinking.

DISCLAIMER: The posts I write and publish on this blog are my own opinions and the opinions of those who contribute to The Linux Critic, and in no way reflect the opinions or official positions of my employer or any of the employers of my contributors.

-- Trent

All content on this blog is copyright (C) Trent Isaacson unless otherwise indicated.